minetest for school kids

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DrNick
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minetest for school kids

by DrNick » Post

Hello to everyone out there, especially those that can help me. I am about as far away from anyone else as I could possibly be over here in Western Australia (warm and humid today) where I have been shown minetest because it has been suggested as a possible tool for introducing coding to school age students. My questions are 1) has it been used in that capacity before and if so are there any examples you can think of that I might be able to access?, 2) if it can be used that way, what years would you be thinking it would suit?3) if it hasn't been used that way but could be does anyone have any suggestions as to how it might be, it would be great if some teachers might reply because they have a better idea of how it might fly in a classroom, but at this stage I would welcome any ideas that we might be able to beat into shape, so non teachers too are welcome to submit ideas, thank you, Nick.

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Krock
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Re: minetest for school kids

by Krock » Post

Programming in Lua isn't too difficult but I'm not a teacher who could share experience with you. However, here are some links from other teachers and the wiki that might help you to find some helpful mods to moderate the lesson:

Another teacher: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=16099 (programs for programming)
Another teacher: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=11222 (for moderated servers but not to teach coding)
Another teacher, but formatted with candy colour: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=11452 (for moderated servers but not to teach coding)

How to block the server list: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=12784
German education wiki entry: https://wiki.minetest.net/Minetest_in_der_Schule (sorry, no english version found)
Further helpful mods to teach kids stuff: https://wiki.minetest.net/Mods:Learning (Lua Controller from mesecons might be interesting)

Of course, there are helpful sites like the modding book to have a pretty formatted API reference and a short entry into modding. But I think it's the most important to start individually with some first steps in modding - requiring some basic knowledge of the functionality when teaching it. The students must understand what they're doing and don't simply copy&paste.
Look, I programmed a bug for you. >> Mod Search Engine << - Mods by Krock - DuckDuckGo mod search bang: !mtmod <keyword here>

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Devy
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Re: minetest for school kids

by Devy » Post

Here are some other posts by teachers (not specific to programming):
1. viewtopic.php?f=3&t=18440
2. viewtopic.php?t=9482

If you want to, you could PM this guy memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=20247 or even memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=19359 as they seem to be teachers who have used Minetest in the classroom before.

Here is a wiki page https://wiki.minetest.net/MinetestEDU (it provides information for teachers who have questions about Minetest) made by the user memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=19359 (same as the second guy in the last paragraph) where he recently posted about the wiki here viewtopic.php?f=3&t=9482&start=75#p301882.

I hope those links give you some good reading material!
Last edited by Devy on Fri Dec 01, 2017 06:53, edited 2 times in total.

sofar
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Re: minetest for school kids

by sofar » Post

I've used Minetest to teach programming and 3d game concepts as a short 20 hour class to a small group of 6/7/8 graders (12-14 age). I mostly teach off the cuff with some scribbled notes, as I'm an experienced programmer for a living, so I don't have any material to share. However, as Krock posted above, teaching Lua as a first language is very low threshold, since you can play around in lua from the command line even without running minetest.

I noticed with the 12-14 age that programming was pretty difficult for a lot of them. I did not expect otherwise, and I do think it helped the kids to stay with it the way we did (don't avoid a challenge, reward them with something tangeable in the end etc.), so the age was definitely appropriate.

There are some people working, or have worked on things like programmable robot mechanics in minetest, which may be a better way to learn programming concepts than lua in a text editor.

hajo
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Re: minetest for school kids

by hajo » Post

sofar wrote:teaching Lua as a first language is very low threshold,
since you can play around in lua from the command line even without running minetest.
See also the lua-demo where you can run lua-code in a web-browser.
Same at ideone.com, and similar sites.

Also have a look at love2d, a framework for making 2D games in Lua, and
trAInsported, a game/simulator where your task is to program AIs to drive a train.
some people working.. on things like programmable robot mechanics in minetest,
which may be a better way to learn programming concepts than lua in a text editor.
That would be rnd's basic-robots.
There is a tutorial, example-programs, etc.

Also, at the robots-server is a tutorial-area with about 20 bots
that show various programs, starting with some basics.

Those robots have the added benefit that they can do something fun
and/or useful inside the game minetest.

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